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How do I UNINSTALL Cortana, not "disable" it.

Disabling Cortana and Uninstalling Cortana are very different things...

My main concern is Windows magically "re-enabling" Cortana if I disable her vs if she is removed it may be harder/less likely for Windows to re-enable/start Cortana.

See -->

Disable Windows program without uninstalling

Are disabling and uninstalling software "XY" the same question aka duplicate?

How to Disable Cortana has many answers in the marked duplicate, but I would love to see this thread re-opened as a separate thread for people whom want to completely delete/uninstall/remove etc Cortana from their Windows System.

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  • Low rep doesn't stop you from answering/sharing. Also I didn't like the tool being called from a .cmd file after having to run it as an administrator
    – clhy
    Commented Sep 24, 2015 at 6:13
  • I don't think CMD is in anyones things i am scared of- list and would ever be.
    – clhy
    Commented Sep 24, 2015 at 6:47
  • @FreeSoftwareServers - It cannot be deleted because it has received votes, was closed, and you also submitted an answer to it.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Nov 23, 2015 at 13:48
  • @clhy CMD is a really anoing thing and while on Linux you have to use it, the real advantage of Windows is that you don´t have to use CMD.
    – convert
    Commented Dec 31, 2022 at 18:30

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Before you begin it should be noted that this breaks search function with regular search bar, BUT if you use a Start Replacement like I do, Star10, You will still have a working search function.

Via WinAero(Detailed guide, not Direct DL Link) Just download the Zip (Uninstall_Cortana_[winaero.com]_1802.zip) and Run the CMD (Uninstall Cortana.cmd) as Admin.

The zip contains 2 files:

install_wim_tweak.exe
Uninstall Cortana.cmd

It is free, install_wim_tweak.exe can also be gotten from Legolash2o's page linked below and you could create your own CMD if you are leary of running downloaded CMD's as Admin.............

Read Article, apparently it is hard to reinstall!

"Behind this trick is an application called WIMTweak which manages Windows Packages and allows you to hide/unhide them from the Windows image (WIM) file. It works on offline images as well as online. WIMTweak was created by MSFN user Legolash2o, so credits for this awesome tool go to him." --WinAero

Legolash2o's page @ MSFN with more details on WIMTweak

The Contents of the CMD are: (But most of the Magic happens with WIMTweak)

@echo off
cd /d "%~dp0"
echo Uninstalling Cortana...
CLS
install_wim_tweak.exe /o /l
install_wim_tweak.exe /o /c Microsoft-Windows-Cortana /r
install_wim_tweak.exe /h /o /l
echo Cortana should be uninstalled. Please reboot Windows 10.
pause

The source code for install_wim_tweak.exe has been posted on GitHub by another user @ https://github.com/shiitake/win6x_registry_tweak

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  • 1
    Should the link go down, we'll never ever know what "the Zip" was.
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Commented Sep 24, 2015 at 6:11
  • You could at least say what the zip is called, and what it does etc. Right now, quite literally there's no clue to what is behind the link
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Commented Sep 24, 2015 at 6:15
  • You ask and answer your own question, with a mystery zip file?
    – Don Simon
    Commented Sep 24, 2015 at 17:55
  • Heh. I'm not quite sure what to do with this. I suppose its a viable solution if you know what install_wim_tweak is and you trust it and you don't accidentally it if was legitimate. However this sort of thing is how you sometimes break a system completely. I'd rather leave the comments in place and let folk decide whether they want to do it. It isn't spam, its just a potentially bad idea that may or may not break a system. YMMV, caveat emptor and do at your own risk.
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Commented Sep 25, 2015 at 7:07
  • 2
    This isn't my code but I've added the install_win_tweak source to github for future reference: github.com/shiitake/win6x_registry_tweak
    – shiitake
    Commented Feb 16, 2018 at 0:01

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